Sunday, July 01, 2018

The Eleven Stages of Moving House


Stage 1 of moving: Excitement -- a new house!  Will they accept the offer? They did.  Oh. My. How. Wonderful.  Life is amazing. A new house to love!


Stage 2 of moving: Enthusiasm -- clean those cabinets, paint those doors, place those casserole dishes just where they will live into eternity in just the right spot. 


Stage 3 of moving: Hard Labor -- fill shopping bags with books, towels, doodads, books, paintings, shoes, blue jeans, and more books.  Carry to new house in 12-16 SUV loads.  Do again.  My route: Fill car, run to Goodwill. Run to storage unit, empty rest at new house.  Return.


Stage 4 of moving: Confidence -- Two men and a truck moved our fridge and piano and beds and other very heavy items.  We are sleeping in the new place.  Halfway there, right?  Wrong.


Stage 5 of moving: Disbelief -- stuff.  so much stuff.  why?  WHY?  Make it go away.  Twenty-one years in the same house turns out to be over 1000 weeks of adding stuff, one little item at a time.  We are moving from 3000 square feet that doesn't count the creepy basement and antiquated unfinished attic that are also full of "stuff" to 1400 square feet. From 5 bedrooms to 2 bedrooms. Do the math.


Stage 6 of moving: Decision-making Burnout -- The notes from every conference ever attended, keep?  No. No definitely not. Well... No. Yes! No.   The first clay pot your daughter made? Keep!  The seventeenth one you run across?  In the trash.  The curtains that one of my adultish children had in some apartment but who knows who?  Give away.  They'll never know unless you blog about it. Where will the trailer, bass boat, and two extra cars GO?  There is no place for them.


Stage 7 of moving: Mishaps -- the fridge was too tall for the new opening. Fixed.  The new basement where I want a media room gets water?  No problem we will deal with later. Put it on the list.  The hose, the furnace vent, the floor joist, the wall behind the washer, the floor in the pantry the poison ivy, the ants.  Fixed. Fixed. And...yeah...f.i.x.e.d.


Pause for dump of things that are not mentioned in these stages.  Utilities. Cable-man, geese, muskrats, hummingbirds, garbage can decisions, mail, rummage sale, estate sale. Marketing our house by owner, showing house (ugh must be pretty), while moving. 409 asphyxiation while cleaning post-move.  See two daughters off for summer, worry about two daughters. Wedding plans. Starting a new job and over 3000 miles of business travel. Oh, and all the wonderful but time-consuming remodeling work on the new house. Waiting. Lots and lots of waiting. It has already been 8 months since we found our new abode.  Molly-the-dog's moving anxiety. Annoying little bank, mortgage, insurance, roofing and electrical issues.  April snow-showers. June 109 degree heat indexes/indices.


Stage 8 of moving: Weariness-- there is no way to empty this house. The thousand cans of paint, the endless piles in the attic of dusty and grimey (now) camping supplies and old hard drives.  One thing, one thing I know for sure -- moving is serious business, not to be taken lightly.  Just say No whenever you can. 


Stage 9 of moving:  teeny, tiny Light at the end of the tunnel -- without landing ourselves in the hospital, (but with a lovely head cold for me) we have reached the day we hand over the keys. We are like abused and jaded golden retrievers, afraid to be excited or happy, afraid we will open a door and find yet another cache of (face it) junk that we forgot about.  We are bleary-eyed, and barely here, but, the day has arrived. 


Stage 10 of moving: Gratitude.  I thank God for my husband.  He has been a solid rock through all this.  He has been a maniac repairing, and dealing and dealing some more.  I am grateful to face each crazy week with his can-do attitude while I just face-plant at yet another obstacle.  Gratitude to God for helping find our new place, find buyers for the old place, and reasonably good health throughout this ordeal nightmare experience.


Stage 11 of moving: Excitement returns!  Oh. My. How. Wonderful.  Life is amazing. A new house to love!  As soon as we figure out how to keep that basement dry...